I've got to be honest I'm still scratching my head over what I just read. The internet polarises opinions for sure, but there are SO many inaccuracies that you have to wonder what purpose there was in writing this? Is it just an anti DSLR bash or an attempt to justify a "small sensor good, large sensor bad" decision? Are we talking about underwater filming here, or all filming?

Just a few points:

Audio - apart from a few niche situations who is worried about this for underwater use? Audio on the newer mirrorless cameras and DSLR's is absolutely fine and certainly comparable to the results you'd get from a camcorder's internal microphone.

DoF - not an issue for WA if you choose the correct lens. For macro we tend to like the shallower DoF and anyway you'd get a similar effect to this using a video camera with diopters.

Blue Planet - was filmed mostly on 16mm film.

Moire and aliasing - this has NOT become worse on the latest DLSR's, it has virtually disappeared from them. The first generation were pretty bad at times, but this was never really an issue underwater where you rarely get straight lines or patterns like brickwork or roof tiles. You did have to be very careful when shooting in a swimming pool though.

Colours - Oh my. The Canon DSLR's produce the most amazing colours underwater. Far, far better than ANY video camera I have used before or after.

Macro vs WA - If you want to do this properly you will always have a dedicated set up for macro and wide angle on a video camera. If you want to swim around and film what you come across then a video camera offers an advantage. Also you can get decent range of zoom through with dome ports on most WA DSLR zooms, which is at least comparible to what you'd get from a standard dome port/dome on a video camera housing.

Documentaries - Most documentaries these days are filmed with large sensor cameras. Smaller sensors are now more or less confined to ENG, but even then there are plenty of guys out there using F5's, FS700's, C300's, FS7's for traditional ENG work.

Stability - Yes DSLR housings are not normally initially well balanced, but this can be resolved very easily by adding buoyancy in the same way you'd add trim weights to a traditional video housing. The only time you should be getting shaky footage is if you can't hold the camera still and if that is the case then you'll get this regardless of what you are using.

Cost - There is a big difference in the set up costs for a DSLR vs a comparable quality video camera. The DLSR can often be 50% cheaper, which is a big decision when negotiating budgets or when it is coming straight out of your own pocket.

Is the article saying that large sensor video cameras are ok, but SLR's with the same size sensor are not, because.......they have a large sensor??

Is the article really supporting the FS100 as a viable alternative to a DSLR for underwater shooting? Seriously???

I will admit that filming on a DSLR and getting good results is more difficult than filming on a video camera where you can just set everything to auto and press record. If you tried to do that on a DSLR you'd be wasting your time so you do need to learn how to film with full manual controls to get the best out of them. I've seen some truly awful underwater footage filmed on a RED, footage that you'd be utterly embarrassed to show others that you'd shot, while on the flip side I've seen jaw droppingly awesome footage shot on a first generation DSLR. I've seen awful footage shot on a EX1 while on the same dive amazing footage shot on an GoPro1.

DSLR's and mirrorless cameras have a significant place in the current filmmakers arsenal. I film on both traditional video cameras and DSLR's and have no bias whatsoever as they both have a role to play. They are tools to be used as we see fit and we certainly shouldn't be excluding one OR the other.

Back in July I took a trip to Komodo with a virtually brand new GH5 Nauticam setup. I shot either the 8mm Olympus pro fisheye for wide angle and the Olympus 12-50mm for everything else. I recorded 4k60p 8bit and output at 1080p. I like the flexibility of being able to punch into the 4k footage. Although my 10 year old Mac Pro was feeling the pain of the large files. I relied heavily on proxy media when cutting.

I just recently switched to this camera from a Sony CX550 camcorder. So, the techniques and all the buttons were really new to me. I really miss the internal flip macro diopter of the L&M Bluefin housing for the CX550. Reaching around to flip the CMC wet diopter into place around the arms on the GH5 setup is a pain comparatively! I was also outfitted with the SmalllHD 501 in a nauticam housing. This allowed me to see much better what I was filming and I could adjust the angle depending upon the shot. The focus and exposure peaking were very helpful.

The downside of using the external monitor is it kills the camera battery life as having the HDMI cable connected prevents the GH5 from going into sleep mode. As a result I had to swap out camera batteries after each dive. I could get about 3 dives from the SmallHDs two batteries.

I used 2 sola 3000s for lighting and a sola 500 for spot.

On each dive I'd manually white balance for ambient and the solas with a grey card. This worked pretty well and I like I could store the values. Although, I'd sometimes forget which white balance setting I had selected--ambient or solas.

Generally I'm pleased with the results, but learned a lot through making mistakes!

I edited in FCPX. Comments and critiques are very welcome. Oh, and I used a Phantom 4 for the drone footage.

Most direct advice I can offer: the sooner you move past wanting to shoot macro + wide angle + video on the same dive with the same rig, the better.

Yes it is technically possible. No it will not lead to optimal results. Why? IMO it is more about mindset and technique than equipment. if you go down wanting to capture everything you come across, your images may be rushed and mediocre. If you go down configured for a particular scenario, you can make the most of it when you find it and although you will miss some shots you will maximize others.

I tried it for a long time. When I finally accepted this advise and concentrated on one thing per dive, my satisfaction with the results went up a lot.

I'm now quite some time in this forum and read a lot of helpful threads, get a lot of very helpful answers to all of my (hopefully not too silly) questions and last but not least bought and sold some nice stuff.

In these times we take such a source of help, inspirations and advice as normal, but it's not!

I thought it's now time to give a big applause and say a warm thank you guys to all of you admins, members and everybody who helped me fo far!

Best regards and a lot of fun and sucess with our beautiful hobby or job!

Attached a little clip from our trip to Addu Atoll, the southernmost Atoll of the Maldives in January 2017. Most scenes are from a single dive at "Manta Point" on 14.01.2017, with a few shots from "Gan Kandu South" dive-site added for good measure.

Shot on Sony AX100 camcorder in a Gates housing. Video lights (Keldan 4x) where only used in one shot. All other clips are ambient light shots. Color corrected in Davinci Resolve, edited in Final Cut Pro X.